Andrew F. Smyth

Andrew Farney Smyth set out in autumn 1835 to join the Red Rovers, a Courtland, Alabama company, learned that most had been massacred at Goliad, and went to Jasper County instead. He enlisted with the Jasper Volunteers as first lieutenant and arrived after San Jacinto. He became a planter, lumberman and riverman, building flatboats, the keelboat Jasper and two mills on Indian Creek. He ran the sternwheeler Laura, bought at Evansville, Indiana, in the early 1870s, on the Neches for about 25 years, and he died suddenly in Beaumont on October 22, 1879.

What the plaque says

Andrew F. Smyth (Star and Wreath) Officer in the Jasper Volunteers during the Texas War for Independence. (1962)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• McFaddin-Ward House — 1.4 mi
  A Beaux-Arts Colonial Revival mansion finished in 1906 and lived in by one family for 75 years, with free guided tours of three furnished floors, the carriage house and gardens.
• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 5.1 mi
  A re-created oil boomtown on the Lamar University campus, with a derrick, period shops, a 1941 granite monument and an optional re-enactment of the January 1901 Lucas gusher.
• Village Creek State Park — 11 mi
  A 2,466-acre state park on one of the few free-flowing creeks in Texas, with a launch for the Village Creek Paddling Trail, boat rentals and sandy-upland trails in the Big Thicket.
• Museum of the Gulf Coast — 19 mi
  Port Arthur's regional museum in a former bank building: fossils, Native Americans, the petroleum story, a 125-foot history mural and Halls of Fame for musicians, athletes and artists.

More markers nearby

• Aubrey Wilson "Moon" Mullican — steps away
• William McFaddin — steps away
• Police Chief Reid Tevis — steps away
• Magnolia Cemetery — steps away